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All Rise...

Appellate Judge Tom Becker learned the hard way that writing reviews can be...murder!

The Charge

"Good Evening."

The Case

Alfred Hitchcock directed only a handful of episodes of his classic '50s TV
series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but he was on hand every week to offer
a witty introduction and take a few jabs at his sponsors. Hitchcock was already
such a brand, that even though he had less creative input on the series than
people might have imagined, people still tuned in for the Hitchcockian
experience that the series promised. They were not disappointed. The show deftly
blended drama, comedy, suspense, occasional bits of the supernatural, and a
healthy helping of murder, serving it with style, wit, and a satisfying twist at
the end.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents ran seven seasons, turning out 270
half-hour episodes. After that, it expanded to 60 minutes and ran another three
seasons as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. All 36 half-hour episodes of
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Four are included in this set.

Disc One • "Poison"—Hitchcock
himself directed this taut tale of a man who finds a poisonous snake sleeping on
his belly. • "Don't Interrupt"—An escaped
mental patient is loose, and a family on a train stopped in a blizzard is
concerned. With Cloris Leachman and Chill Wills. • "The
Jokester"—A reporter plays one too many practical jokes.
• "The Crooked Road"—A couple finds themselves at the
mercy of small-town corruption when they have car trouble. With Walter Matthau,
Richard Kiley, and Patricia Breslin • "The $2,000,000
Defense"—A man (Leslie Nielsen) offers his lawyer and good friend
(Barry Sullivan) a whopping-high fee if the lawyer can get him off a murder rap.
• "Design for Loving"—Despite a great cast,
including Barbara Baxley, Norman Lloyd, and Marian Seldes, this silly episode
about Androids just proves that AHP should have left science fiction to
The Twilight Zone. • "Man with a
Problem"—Gary Merrill as a man perched on a ledge, distraught over
the demise of his marriage to Elizabeth Montgomery.
• "Safety for the Witness"—Art Carney in a
Prohibition-era story of a man who witnesses a gangland hit.
• "Murder Me Twice"—Phyllis Thaxter as a woman who
commits a crime while under hypnosis—or was she?

Disc Two • "Tea Time"—Margaret
Leighton as a woman who confronts her husband's mistress, with surprising
results. • "And the Desert Shall Blossom"—A
couple of prospectors get a visit from a criminal on the run.
• "Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Fenimore"—Two women in a
boarding house scheme to do away with the wealthy uncle of one of them. With
Mary Astor. • "Six People, No Music"—The owner
of a funeral parlor is shaken when a corpse sits up and starts dictating orders.
With John McGiver and Peggy Cass. • "The Morning
After"—Jeanette Nolan, Fay Wray, Robert Alda, and Dorothy Provine in
a story of a woman desperate to break up her daughter's relationship with a
married man. • "A Personal Matter"—A new man
at a mining site causes tension with the foreman. • "Out
There—Darkness"—Bette Davis as an unmarried eccentric who
accuses a hotel employee of assaulting her. • "Total
Loss"—Nancy Olson as the owner of a failing dress shop looking for a
way out. • "The Last Dark Step"—Lurid tale of
a man trying to rid himself of a sexy woman so he can marry a respectable one.
With Joyce Meadows, Robert Horton, and Fay Spain.

Disc Three • "The Morning of the
Bride"—Barbara Bel Geddes as a woman who is nervous about meeting her
new mother-in-law. • "The Diamon
Necklace"—Claude Rains as a long-time jewelry store employee who is
duped out of an expense necklace. • "Relative
Value"—A man decides to speed up his wealthy cousin's demise, with
surprisingly fatal results. Denholm Elliott and Torin Thatcher.
• "The Right Price"—An unhappily married man haggles
with a hitman over the cost to get rid of his wife.
• "I'll Take Care of You"—A used car lot owner and
his elderly, faithful employee find themselves bound even closer when something
happens to the younger man's wife. • "The Avon
Emeralds"—Roger Moore as government employee trying to stop a wealthy
widow from smuggling her family's jewels out of England without paying taxes.
• "The Kind Waitress"—Goaded by her ne'er
do-well boyfriend, a waitress (Olive Deering) begins slowly poisoning an elderly
customer who's provided for her in her will. • "Cheap Is
Cheap"—A skinflint (Dennis Day) searches for an inexpensive way to
divest himself of an increasingly expensive wife. • "The
Waxworks"—To win a bet, a nervous writer agrees to be locked in the
Murderer's Hall of a wax museum over night.

Disc Four • "The Impossible
Dream"—Mary Astor and Franchot Tone square off as a washed-up actor
and a woman who has information that could destroy his reputation.
• "Banquo's Chair"—Hitchcock's second and final
directorial effort this season, the story of a unique plan for getting a man to
confess to murder. • "A Night with the Boys"—A
man loses his paycheck in a poker game and tells his wife he was mugged; imagine
his surprise when the police find the mugger. • "Your
Witness"—An arrogant, unfaithful lawyer (Brian Keith) drives his wife
to desperate measures. • "The Human Interest
Story"—Steve McQueen as a reporter investigating a man who claims to
be a Martian. • "The Dusty Drawer"—A professor
(Dick York) makes his housemate, a banker, miserable over a $200 discrepancy.
• "A True Account"—A nurse who married her
patient's widower tells her a lawyer that she thinks he killed his first wife.
• "Touché"—A man believes he can legally
eliminate his wife's lover by challenging him to a duel. With Paul Douglas, Hugh
Marlowe, and Robert Morse. • "Invitation to an
Accident"—A newlywed (Joanna Moore) acts recklessly around her earthy
husband (Gary Merrill).

Let's get this out of the way up front: this is a great series, and these
episodes are terrifically entertaining. Even the weakest ones are nothing less
than great fun.

The production values are simple but strong, with some very good camerawork.
A few of these episodes were shot by John L. Russell, who was responsible for Psycho. Music is generally
stock but well used, except of course for the series' recognizable theme,
"Funeral March of a Marionette."

The acting and directing are just wonderful. "Big" names like
Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Mary Astor, Roger Moore, Franchot Tone, and Steve
McQueen do great work here, as do lesser names like John McGiver, Phyllis
Thaxter, Ralph Meeker, and Robert Horton. The great Barbara Bel Geddes gives a
remarkable turn as a frightened newlywed in "The Morning of the
Bride," a program that must have been shocking when it first ran, though is
less so for audiences familiar with some of Hitchcock's later work. Gary
Merrill, at the time unhappily married to Davis, appears twice this season
(though not with her), offering two very different but still sinister stand-out
performances.

The real star is the writing. Clever and literate, these are perfectly
transferred short stories. There is very little excess or padding, and no
unnecessarily "jazzy" touches. Each episode has its twist, but unlike
some shows, the twists here are organic; they never feel tacked on or
convoluted. The endings serve all that has gone before, instead of the other way
around. There's no sense of slogging through a 25-minute set-up just to get to a
lame punchline.

What's surprising is how well the comedy episodes play. Usually, dramatic
anthologies fall flat when they try to veer into comical territory—witness
the decidedly unamusing results when The Twilight Zone gave us "Mr.
Bevis," "Cavender Is Coming," or "Showdown with Rance
McGrew," which suffered from heavy-handed slapstick and gags that fell
flat. On AHP, the humor—present in most episodes—is generally
more sophisticated, heavily infused with irony. We also get the occasional
in-joke: In "Cheap Is Cheap," a man looking to have is wife killed is
appalled at the price of a professional hit. He's advised by the hitman to do it
himself and then mentions a TV show he saw in which "a real cute dame
clobbered her old man over the head with a leg of lamb," a reference to the
AHP classic, "Lamb to the Slaughter."

Among the better episodes here are the uncomfortably tense,
Hitchcock-directed "Poison;" "The Crooked Road," which
features top-notch work from a young Walter Matthau; "Tea Time," which
gives us an outstanding turn by Margaret Leighton and a truly clever twist;
"The Diamond Necklace," which is Claude Rains' show from start to
finish; "The Waxwork," a genuinely creepy haunted wax museum thriller;
"The Impossible Dream," which finds acting fireworks in the
performances of Astor and Tone; and "The Human Interest Story," with a
young Steve McQueen already showing off star power in a tricky but well executed
script. Davis' turn in "Out There—Darkness" is exceptional, the
kind of larger-than-life performance usually reserved for the screen, full of
nuances and small moments; she's so compelling that you barely notice that the
story doesn't really hold up.

The shows are actually in pretty good shape. There's a bit of print damage
here and there, and some episodes look a bit rough, but for 50-year-old
television programs that haven't been "gloriously remastered," these
are pretty clean. Audio is a standard mono track, and there are English
subtitles. The lone extra, "Fasten Your Seatbelt: The Thrilling Art of
Alfred Hitchcock," is a six-minute-plus look at the Master of Suspense
through the eyes of some contemporary directors, including John Carpenter,
Martin Scorsese, and Eli Roth. This seems to have been put together from the
interviews shot for the special editions of Psycho, Vertigo, and
Rear Window released in 2008.

The Verdict

What a treat to have these episodes on DVD. Suspenseful, funny, and
compelling, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Four is another great
example of the "Golden Age" of television.